The Celebration of Photography

By Ron Leach

As the year draws to a close and everyone prepares to take a few days off to celebrate the holidays, we thought we could also celebrate photography with some quotes from a few luminaries of the craft:

Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.
—George Eastman

Once the amateur's naive approach and humble willingness to learn fades away, the creative spirit of good photography dies with it. Every professional should remain always in his heart an amateur.
—Alfred Eisenstaedt

The problem for an amateur is that he/she has no reason to take a photograph.
—Terence Donovan

If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up.
—Richard Avedon

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
—Dorothea Lange

Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.
—Henri Cartier-Bresson

I dream that someday the step between my mind and my finger will no longer be needed. And that simply by blinking my eyes, I shall make pictures. Then, I think, I shall really have become a photographer.
—Alfred Eisenstaedt

I never liked photography. Not for the sake of photography. I like the object. I like the photographs when you hold them in your hand.
—Helmut Newton

Now, to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravity before going for a walk.
—Edward Weston

Hardening of the categories causes art disease.
—W. Eugene Smith

If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough.
—Robert Capa

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter, because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the ordinary.
—David Bailey

I find the single most valuable tool in the darkroom is my trash can.
– John Sexton

There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.
—Ansel Adams

Enjoy the holidays and happy shooting from all of us at Shutterbug!